She got herself a room two doors down from Alice’s in the hotel. She did not intend to let Alice know she was there, but until she could know how her ‘fan’ knew where Alice was or if she was really near by, she wasn’t going let Alice stay alone in a strange city. She owed Alice that much and somewhere in pain of the emptiness in Alice’s eyes, Dana’s anger started to grow and with that growth came an animalistic urge to protect at all costs. God help this stalker if she actually had the bad sense to go near Alice while Dana was around.

—

Alice woke with a wicked headache. Apparently, watching bad pay per view movies, while drinking a couple of bottles of Sauvignon Blanc wasn’t as good for clearing her mind as she initially thought. She was still angry and hurt by Dana. She still had no idea what she should do. What she did know was that she had a killer headache and only wanted to crawl back into bad. Sadly, she had a job to do and didn’t have that liberty. She trudged out of bed and headed into the shower, hoping that would make the morning of boring hearings tolerable, though she doubted it.

After a hasty cup of coffee and she decided ready to leave the room and face the day. She opened the door to find a box of jellybeans and a letter addressed with Dana’s meticulous handwriting. Alice grabbed the candy and threw it her bag along with the card. Though the shower and coffee helped her prepare herself to deal with work, she was in no way ready to deal with Dana.

—

Tina and Julia were having coffee at The Planet when Bette joined them. Other than the group brunch before Alice left, they hadn’t seen each other since their decision to try friendship.

“Tina is everything ok? Is Cara ok? You sounded really anxious when you called me this morning.”

“She’s fine Bette. I’m sorry if I worried you. I wasn’t sure what your plans were today and since I’m heading to New York later today, I wanted to make sure I caught up with you.”